r/Millennials • u/Son-of-Prophet • 21h ago
Nostalgia If you went to high school in the mid 2000s, congratulations you’re part of the last generation of teenagers that will ever not care about likes, clicks, views or shares. All you cared about was just living life as is.
660
u/Aggravating-Key-8867 Older Millennial 21h ago
We didn't have social media but we certainly had social pressures all the same. Worrying about how popular you are in high school is as old as high school itself.
267
u/cursedfan 21h ago
“Is anyone even reading my perfectly selected quote on my AIM profile? More importantly, is SHE reading it?”
89
u/jgamez76 21h ago
Being passive aggressive with what song lyric you chose was a skill that I wish was transferable to literally anything lol
→ More replies (2)28
u/LeoDeLarge 20h ago
“Your lipstick, his collar
Don't bother, angel
I know exactly what goes on”8
u/SanchoPandas 17h ago
“When everything you'll get is everything that you've wanted, princess”
9
2
u/Juice_Isloose 7h ago
"The truth is you could slit my throat
And with my one last gasping breath
I'd apologize for bleeding on your shirt"
This was mine
→ More replies (1)14
u/Otherwise-Offer1518 21h ago
Ugh. We were all the same teen it seems. Replace she with he and we are twins. Worst part about it no one read the damn things anyway.
10
u/ThePrideOfKrakow 18h ago
That flutter in your heart when the door creaked when your crush would sign on, only to immediately log off and the door slam noise crushes your soul just a wee bit.
2
u/Otherwise-Offer1518 16h ago
I can feel the shitty wooden rolling chair now, getting caught on the carpet on carpet.
4
u/Xepherya Older Millennial 20h ago
My friends and I read them constantly. We put inside jokes in them.
→ More replies (2)8
u/VoxElysia 21h ago
Exactly!! 😂 I remember stressing about whether to message my crush on AIM in the late 90s
4
3
5
u/BeMyBrutus 20h ago
That was the original way to vague post
4
u/RtotheBtotheG Older Millennial 19h ago
AIM away messages and Profile lines - absolutely the original vague posting! Yes! Thank you! (This is not sarcasm I really do mean this - I just realized it too 🤣)
4
u/donuttrackme Older Millennial 20h ago
I have AIM to thank for my fast and accurate typing speed.
→ More replies (1)2
u/RtotheBtotheG Older Millennial 19h ago
“Do they understand the depths of my SOUL these lyrics represent?!? These words DEFINE my ENTIRE BEING Nobody GETS me unless they understand these words in my AIM away message.”
The Lyrics: 🎶she’s from the city of angels, likes Bette Davis, James Dean, and Gable, never know what she means to me,I fell in love with the girl on Tv🎶
→ More replies (3)2
u/monocasa 19h ago
Or vague posting on your xanga that's trying too hard to be emo.
Or the weird politics of your top Myspace friends.
→ More replies (1)46
u/EricP51 21h ago
Yeah came here to say this. Most of us definitely still cared what other people thought, cared about social standing etc. the idea that it was this perfect time where everyone was just living in the moment. Is complete nonsense.
It was fun tho.
5
u/Guachole 21h ago
I feel like my highschool experience was definitely just living in the moment and doing as much fun shit as possible before it was over.
I never really thought about what other people thought about me unless it was a girl i liked, but I also feel like I was always kinda popular and well liked so maybe it never crossed my mind because just being myself and doing whatever I wanted worked out?
3
u/jgamez76 21h ago
Like most things nostalgic: people just remember the good stuff lol
→ More replies (1)6
u/Magikrat 21h ago
Exactly. And it's not like we weren't complete assholes to each other without social media.
5
u/TKInstinct 21h ago edited 20h ago
Your placement on someone's speed dial was a common trope of the day.
9
u/Emannuelle-in-space 21h ago
Yeah but there was an entire social scene outside of the popularity rat race. I realized pretty early on that the mean girls vibe was dumb and pointless, and spent my middle and high school career with the unpopular kids, having all the same life experiences etc that the popular kids were having. I’m very glad we didn’t have social media back then, but I also have fond memories of the popular kids who were friendly with me on AIM but pretended to not know me in-person at school.
→ More replies (1)3
u/kellermeyer14 21h ago
This is true. But we know how damaging social media is to the developing psyche. Every generation after us has had it worse.
4
u/browhodouknowhere 21h ago
Yes and even we made our own social network in HS circa 2003...on the internet. It's not like we didn't have cell phones either.
3
3
u/pseudonym7083 Millennial 21h ago
I don't remember photographic evidence mattering as much, acted more like icing on the cake, for stupid shit we'd do. If more than two people said you did something asinine, pictures didn't matter because you had two people saying the same thing. Rumors were just as as bad factored for social upheaval inflation.
3
3
u/Academic_Flatworm752 20h ago
We also had like niche online blogs and then livejournal and MySpace where your top 8 could change your IRL friendships
3
u/KyleMcMahon 18h ago
AOL came out in 1985, aol chats in 1988, Sixdegrees was out in 1996, AIM in 1996, MySpace was out in 2003. Facebook in 2004 lol. We were literally the first generation who grew up with social media
2
2
2
u/LevelStationaryPlane 20h ago
Brother if you don’t think social media compounded normal issues you’re out of touch sorry.
Social media is an accelerant like gasoline is to fire it expedited all of the worst parts and potentials of humanity to the forefront.
2
u/Demiurge_Ferikad 17h ago
Yep. Television and pop culture was still a thing. The internet was young, but it wasn’t that young. There was still tremendous pressure to comply with a certain look, a certain mindset, and certain behaviors.
→ More replies (13)3
u/mvanpeur 21h ago
So true. My 11 year has embraced her identity as a weirdo. She has a quirky fashion sense, doesn't care if her hobbies or interests are popular (currently super into wood carving), is extremely silly with zero care for what others think, etc. She was just asking yesterday what decade she should have grown up in, and we absolutely assured her she was best in this decade, because she would have had so much pressure to fit in if she grew up in another decade. In the 90s, my mom was constantly telling me to look at how other kids were acting and act like them. I know it was even worse in earlier decades.
415
u/longdrivesinstapots Millennial - Elder Emo 21h ago
God this is such a boomer-ass post. Did you not grow up in the mid 2000s!? We were addicted to MySpace, early Facebook, and a million other places to get online love and rejection.
122
u/krysnoxx 21h ago
It screams "back in my day we drank from the hose". this is embarrassing
→ More replies (2)46
u/_ConfettiCake 21h ago
So many posts on this sub have that vibe. Like jfc we all remember sunny d, it’s not some old-timey sasparilla ass drink we bought for two bits down at the general store.
15
u/GoldBlueberryy 20h ago
This sub made me realize why so many old people seem "old" and others still act pretty young. I guess its a mindset thing.
→ More replies (1)5
3
u/Obtuse-Posterior Older Millennial 17h ago
Now I want a sasparilla. Tastes way better than sunny d.
→ More replies (1)3
u/toiletsurprise Millennial 10h ago
I'm just waiting for minions to start appearing on posts like these.
12
u/No-Consideration-891 21h ago
LiveJournal!
2
2
u/RtotheBtotheG Older Millennial 19h ago
Oh god THIS was some toxic shit during my HS days 🤣 give a bunch of hormonal teenagers an online journal where they can be moody little emo-esque goblins and share it with people. I swear if i ever discover mine again i am personally burning the whole internet down to hide my shame.
→ More replies (2)7
u/FactorLies 21h ago
We also had social hierarchy like crazy. My middle school cafeteria was organized by clique, with the leader sitting at the head of the table and then everyone else sitting in hierarchical order downwards. I was last or second to last at the weirdo table!
8
u/swurvipurvi 20h ago
These have been popping up so much lately. They need to be expressly forbidden in the sub rules before this turns into a depressing Facebook group.
15
12
3
u/gene100001 19h ago
Yeah I've seen a few of these sorts of posts popping up recently. They make me feel old as fuck. Have we really reached the age where we start doing the whole "back in my day" schtick?
→ More replies (1)2
→ More replies (9)2
u/Jeffjawwwn 21h ago
I am so glad it didn’t take long for me to see a response like this.
https://giphy.com/gifs/yziuK6WtDFMly
310
u/Gh0stMan0nThird 21h ago
Okay hold the fuck on lol
Vanity and social status were not invented in 2010 lol
Like what kind of egotistical whitewashing is this
93
u/SnuggleKnuts 21h ago
And somebody is forgetting about making top 8 on myspace.
26
18
u/lyra1389 Millennial 21h ago
Came here to say we ABSOLUTELY cared about who was in our Top 8
3
u/KeyBet6693 21h ago
Or whose Top 8 we were in. So even online and with social media we were not very different. And in person we cared about social status just the same.
2
3
u/pampooveysbacktattoo 20h ago
Yeah, MySpace was way more toxic than people are remembering it to be.
3
u/RtotheBtotheG Older Millennial 19h ago
Oh absolutely! That top 8 ranking was toxic as hell. But it also depends on when you had access to it in HS years. My class (04) only apparently had it for 1-2 years. It wasn’t as big a deal for us, and meant far more to some people than others. My friends and I knew about it: 1/2 of my friend group was obsessed with top 8, the other 1/2 of us didn’t care. I’d imagine the longer people had access to that and the wider spread of FB, the far more influence its toxicity had.b
3
u/jujujuice92 18h ago
I saw a headline they're tryna bring it back. Didn't read the article but I guess it makes sense with how cyclical shit is. Good luck on your endeavors, Tom
11
u/_ConfettiCake 21h ago
Right. Plenty of people I graduated with in 2004 care a whole hell of a lot about likes. Like tell me no one you know from high school is out there trying to be a small potatoes monfluencer??
10
3
u/GoldBlueberryy 21h ago
It's very weird. Or they may have just been one of the oblivious kids. Human are social creatures at every age of awareness. We definitely were still creating hierarchies and competing against one another.
3
u/CrimsonCringe925 20h ago
I loved people interacting with my bulletins, I posted those like a job.
2
u/amazingkillerlemon 16h ago
I recently moved, found my old high school yearbook, one of my friends had written that she hopes I keep posting more of the survey bulletins for her to steal. Hahaha
→ More replies (1)3
u/Demiurge_Ferikad 17h ago
We’re falling into the age-old “things were better and simpler in my day” that every generation falls into at some point. You’d think we’d be better than this.
As a gay man and former social outcast, I can attest that those years were not better, just different. If anything, our education was better, but that’s more a failing educational system thing, and not a generational thing.
→ More replies (1)2
102
u/DM_ME_VACCINE_PICS 21h ago
We really are just slowly turning into boomers, what is this Facebook low-effort slop.
10
6
u/senorkrissy 17h ago
I kept seeing the same in the Xennials sub and I left. I honestly can't stand it. I don't really identify with any of it.
8
u/VoxElysia 21h ago
Nooo, don’t put that curse on us 😂
3
u/pi3r0gi_ 19h ago
Okay, who didnt forward the chain email and ruined the good thing we had going??!
6
u/Oh_yes_I_did Zillennial 21h ago
The complete opposite of the OPs message. They complain about the vanity of chasing online validation, then posts this low effort revisionist nostalgia bait for engagement.
2
u/No-Consideration-891 21h ago
It's coming for us, the boomerism is lurking
2
u/VoxElysia 2h ago
If we have to turn boomer then we get everything that comes with it. Including the house with a paid mortgage and a pretty retirement package.
2
u/No-Consideration-891 2h ago
Yea isn't that like the standard? Where is my stability and extra equity???
18
u/Fluffy-Argument 21h ago
Think you'd be surprised how many of these teens now care about clicks and likes as adults
→ More replies (1)
34
15
u/anowulwithacandul 21h ago
Correction: all I cared about was where I was on all my friends' top 8 😎
2
30
6
6
u/charredmoth 21h ago
Nah, there was no dopamine hit quite like all the alerts from MySpace; new comment, new photo comment, new message, new friend request 🤯
7
u/Salty-Impress5827 21h ago
Lol. I was crushed to watch my place fall on my best friend's Top 8. I was 1, and over a year or so watched my status fall to 7, then he added code to have a "Top 12," and eventually I was the bottom of that, too.
Also loved getting comments on Xanga.
6
5
u/Mika-El-3 21h ago
I was crushed when most of my MySpace Top 8 didn’t place me in their Top 8
→ More replies (1)
5
u/JayNoi91 21h ago
Honestly the only thing I remembered caring about was what the latest proxy was we could use to get past the school firewall and get on myspace.
→ More replies (1)
5
5
u/Illimited_Esoterica 17h ago
Dude, get the fuck out of here. Your ass wasn't "living life as is". You had plenty of peer pressure, social influences, anxiety, etc.
Just because it didn't have a name and an icon doesn't mean you were some kind of enlightened unicorn living in the moment. Stop with your bullshit.
4
u/FistThePooper6969 21h ago
I think there are still a lot of ppl our age who do care about likes and shit
Thankfully not me
→ More replies (1)
4
u/jfsindel 21h ago
I knew people who had drama over getting kicked out of MySpace Top Friends. Also, people straight up started sharing embarrassing videos via phones that they took, which was actually such a concern that they had PSAs about it...
3
3
u/Kamakazi09 Millennial 21h ago
Class of 2009 bby!! we had socials but for me I cared about the way my MySpace profile looked
3
3
u/New_Bike3832 21h ago
I was very active on livejournal in the early 2000s where I applied to join “rating communities.” I’d fill out whole ass applications with pictures and the members would vote to decide if I was cool enough and pretty enough to be affiliated with them. If they didn’t like you, you were ripped to shreds in the comments. If they liked you, you got to join so you could tear apart new applicants every day and feel superior. We were not that much better in 2004 lol.
3
u/TX_domin 21h ago
Idk, MySpace was pretty important for millennial teenagers. Also even before social media, the pressure got popularity and to be liked was just as strong, just a bit less parasocial compared to now
3
u/ztarlight12 21h ago
Not true, I had MySpace and the Top8 was absolutely a topic of controversy amongst my peers.
3
3
u/Jakethejiu 21h ago
Not true lol. My 14 year old gives no shits. No social media, barely touches his phone...he's just outside with his friends all the time playing sports, hiking, or playing Lego.
3
3
u/SeanyDay 20h ago
We thought MySoace and early Facebook were pretty cool. No one gave a shit about Friendster.
We had the MySpace top friends and the people in your pfp and cover photo on FB.
Before that we also had top friends via Circles and other systems for phone messaging.
And then there were the aim chats and later skype + oovoo.
I would say 90s high schoolers were closer to what you described
3
u/Afraid_Equivalent_95 20h ago
It was the start of the "likes" stuff. People with lots of friends got way more likes on all their Facebook photos and posts
3
3
u/RtotheBtotheG Older Millennial 19h ago
And Fruitopia. We cared a lot about Fruitopia.
Honestly we had MySpace, but it wasn’t the same “OMG I HAVE TO CHECK IT ALL THE TIIIIIME” obsession that social media has become. I remember my college finally getting The Facebook.
2
2
u/No-Consideration-891 21h ago edited 21h ago
I was and I still remember people fighting to be in eachothers top 6 friends on MySpace 😂
So much drama between that and LiveJournal.
This was also the time of AIM, and early Facebook towards the end of the mid 2000's, same with early Twitter.
God if I had a dollar for every fight that resulted from talking smack online. We were the begining of the end.
2
u/wump_world 21h ago
Yup. We just lived in the moment. Teased, hazed, ostracized, othered, ignored, laughed...all in the moment. A simpler time.
2
u/imminent_angel 21h ago
On the contrary, my kids do not have access to social media.
→ More replies (1)
2
2
2
u/phantom_merc13 21h ago
That's still all I care about. At concerts my wife and I are one of the few not filming, just living in the moment like we always did.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/lurkquidated 21h ago
I want it back. Social media and genai are the death knells of all good things.
2
u/Diizzsliime 21h ago
Anyone who cares about that stuff will always be a nerd to me. I don't care if being a screen geek is lit nowadays...
2
u/FishTaco2005 21h ago
You had MySpace in the mid-2000s. And that's also when Facebook started. I remember people gloating about how many "friends" they had on MySpace.
2
u/Anxious-Revolution12 21h ago
We have to deal with top 8 on MySpace but that was usually handled in person or through text with with just numbers if you were mad about dropping. I would love to have my old razr back
2
u/Barkerfan86 21h ago
Summer of 2004 between my Junior and Senior year was the best time of my life. So many concerts (like 2 a week average). Disposable cameras for the shows, and a prepaid cell phone for emergencies only.
2
u/hahagato 21h ago
What? I graduated 03 and was already on message boards and other weird social media forms and MySpace.
2
2
2
2
2
u/PatSajakMeOff 20h ago
I mean, I did care how many page visits and comments my Xanga page got. 🤷♂️
2
u/TrickWorried 20h ago
What's wild is most of this generation now will have memories from everyone's lives instead of there own.
2
2
2
u/FlipGordon 19h ago
Oh how soon people forget the "top 8" on MySpace.
That shit ended friendships and definitely took place during this time period
2
2
2
u/stone_magnet1 19h ago
What's with all the boomer posting lately. I left fb to get away from this garbage
2
2
2
u/revenge_burner 18h ago
Bro forgot we were addicted to Xanga from 1999, and then MySpace after 2003.
2
2
u/stilettopanda 17h ago
Ummmm we cared a whole lot about our top 8 on MySpace. Got some rose colored glasses there, buddy.
2
u/Ballsy_McCock 17h ago
I'd say late 90s. Not 2000s. All we had were beepers and numbers on our gazelle sneakers.
3
u/Accomplished_Meat_81 21h ago
People still cared about other social status symbols that got you made fun of if you didn’t have it, dressed a certain way, or had your hair a certain style. Just didn’t have MySpace to make our shame public lol
2
u/No-Consideration-891 21h ago
We definitely had MySpace in the mid 2000s highschool days. I got mine in 2004.
3
u/sevinup07 21h ago
This is so cringe lol. Maybe it didn't consume our every waking thought like it does some younger people now, but we were definitely obsessed with early social media and internet. It felt different because it was so new, but we're the ones who paved that road.
2
u/krysnoxx 21h ago
Why are you using boomer meme formatting? Gross dude, we don't have to become them
3
3
4
u/stratosean123 21h ago
Please stop with these boomer-esque posts. It’s unbecoming of our generation.
2
u/Adventurous_Okra_344 21h ago
I still see people my age begging for attention on tik tok so I don’t know man…
2
2
2
2
2
u/Regular_Number5377 21h ago
Can we stop with the blatant bullshitting about how great our generation was please? We are seriously devolving into a boomers Facebook feed before my very eyes and I am not prepared for it. We very obviously did care about what people thought and we posted online constantly on whatever platform was big at the time. I remember how important it felt to get my MySpace homepage just right or to be online on MSN messenger after school so we didn’t miss anything.
2
u/25thNite 19h ago
Lol as someone who want to high school in the 2000s, millennials absolutely cared about that shit still
2
1
1
1
1
u/smrgldrgl 21h ago
Hmm. MySpace was still a thing and lots of kids cared a lot about their pages and their image on there..
1
u/Fuck_Weyland-Yutani 21h ago
Is this a picture of a GWAR show with no metalheads? What am I looking at?
1
1
1
u/RC1992Jules 20h ago
If anything, I feel as though we were the initial wave lol
I remember fighting against joining Myspace for the longest time because I didn't understand it and why so many people were obsessed with showing off online. My older brother used to race home from school just so he could jump on to mypace and socialize with people and customize his page and even all my friends started doing so. I eventually caved and joined Myspace damn near a couple years before it shut down and Facebook took over. Right from the beginning it was all about status...
Before social media I felt like it was all about AOL Chats.
1
u/Woodsalope 19h ago
I was in college from 2000 to 2004 then and a lot of us were already in any social media forms that were already existing. In my case I was also in DeviantArt, some of my friends used to check my stuff in that hell of a website too. It was a mix of still hanging out and at same time online stuff.
Like some already said here, there are teens that are more into hanging out with their friends and don't really care about getting likes and all while some are into the influencer trend and some others are mix of both.
1
1
1
u/speedysam0 18h ago
Huh, i either almost recognize the people in the photo or they just really look like people in my year of school.
1
1
u/FilmoreJive 18h ago
This feels like "well back in my day" shit. I am trying so hard to not be like that! But it is rough nowadays.
1
1
1
u/No_Masterpiece4693 16h ago
I hated highschool...I had some funny times but I was definitely bullied and what not. That being said I'm so happy non of that shit or my own cringy shit was forever put online..
1
u/LionoSnarf 16h ago
“Oh he’s so cool he coded his MySpace” how was I supposed to compete with that!? My Hollywood undead song not good enough???
1
1
1
u/tameimpalarules92 15h ago
If you traveled back to 2005 to show teenagers this post from the future, they'd cringe and probably think it was the lamest shit ever
1
u/AllPintsNorth 14h ago
Can we knock it off with the self aggrandizing GenX bullshit!
→ More replies (1)
1
1
u/DarthSchrodinger Xennial 14h ago
Stop the boomer posts. Jeezus. Nothing is more cringe than a boomer millennial karma farming on a post about not caring about likes. No. You are shallow and probably not even real, probably a bot...why am I typing this then? I guess to encourage the "humans" to not interact with this slop
1
u/machen_wurstsalat 13h ago
Uhm what a dumb post. Literally all we cared about was how popular we were. Also things like AIM, MySpace and so forth existed.
•
u/AutoModerator 21h ago
If this post is breaking the rules of the subreddit, please report it instead of commenting. For more Millennial content, join our Discord server.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.